Auburn raises may yield highest-paid staff in FBS

Posted on: June 14, 2011 12:27 pm

Edited on: June 14, 2011 12:43 pm

Posted by Jerry Hinnen

Surprise! Keeping 8/9ths of a BCS national championship-winning coaching staff together for three straight years -- a staff that includes likely the nation's hottest offensive coordinator -- gets really expensive!

According to the Birmingham Newsand salary information provided by USA Today, the new coaching salaries officially released by Auburn Monday make the Tiger collection of assistants the hands-down best-compensated at any U.S. public university. The only contender for "highest-paid staff in America" appears to be that of USC, which features reported $4 million man Lane Kiffin but as a private university has not officially divulged contract information for any of its coaches.

The details of the Auburn raises:

Collectively, Auburn's assistants will earn $4,085,000, well ahead of the $3.6 million spent by second-place Texas.

The aformentioned offensive coordinator, Gus Malzahn, is now officially the nation's highest-paid (public) assistant with a 160 percent raise to $1.3 million per year.

All together, the seven assistants retained from Gene Chizik's initial hires two years ago have received raises of 70 percent.

And of course that doesn't take into account the sizable raise announced last week for Chizik himself, which now includes the nation's largest 2011 buyout--a whopping $10 million.

It's quite the outlay, though few Auburn fans -- after watching the staff in question take the Tigers from the embarrassment of the 36-0 defeat to Alabama that capped the 2008 season to last year's BCS title -- would say the staff hasn't earned every penny. Still, the huge bump in salary will no doubt create an equal bump in expectations, and with Auburn the least-experienced team in the FBS this fall, those are expectations the staff will have quite the challenge trying to meet.

Auburn raises may yield highest-paid staff in FBS

This is a nice reward for what the team accomplished last season. I do not see near the same results this upcoming season, so I have to wonder if they are going to want to take the money back after they go 7-5 this year.

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